The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, by Michel de Montaigne

Chapter 31

That a Man is Soberly to Judge of the Divine Ordinances

The true field and subject of imposture are things unknown, forasmuch as, in the first place, their
very strangeness lends them credit, and moreover, by not being subjected to our ordinary reasons, they deprive us of
the means to question and dispute them: For which reason, says Plato, 1 it is much more easy to satisfy the hearers, when speaking of the nature of the gods than of
the nature of men, because the ignorance of the auditory affords a fair and large career and all manner of liberty in
the handling of abstruse things. Thence it comes to pass, that nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know;
nor any people so confident, as those who entertain us with fables, such as your alchemists, judicial astrologers,
fortune-tellers, and physicians,

To which I would willingly, if I durst, join a pack of people that take upon them to interpret and control the
designs of God Himself, pretending to find out the cause of every accident, and to pry into the secrets of the divine
will, there to discover the incomprehensible motive, of His works; and although the variety, and the continual
discordance of events, throw them from corner to corner, and toss them from east to west, yet do they still persist in
their vain inquisition, and with the same pencil to paint black and white.

In a nation of the Indies, there is this commendable custom, that when anything befalls them amiss in any encounter
or battle, they publicly ask pardon of the sun, who is their god, as having committed an unjust action, always imputing
their good or evil fortune to the divine justice, and to that submitting their own judgment and reason. ’Tis enough for
a Christian to believe that all things come from God, to receive them with acknowledgment of His divine and inscrutable
wisdom, and also thankfully to accept and receive them, with what face soever they may present themselves. But I do not
approve of what I see in use, that is, to seek to affirm and support our religion by the prosperity of our enterprises.
Our belief has other foundation enough, without going about to authorise it by events: for the people being accustomed
to such plausible arguments as these and so proper to their taste, it is to be feared, lest when they fail of success
they should also stagger in their faith: as in the war wherein we are now engaged upon the account of religion, those
who had the better in the business of Rochelabeille, 3
making great brags of that success as an infallible approbation of their cause, when they came afterwards to excuse
their misfortunes of Moncontour and Jarnac, by saying they were fatherly scourges and corrections that they had not a
people wholly at their mercy, they make it manifestly enough appear, what it is to take two sorts of grist out of the
same sack, and with the same mouth to blow hot and cold. It were better to possess the vulgar with the solid and real
foundations of truth. ’Twas a fine naval battle that was gained under the command of Don John of Austria a few months
since 4 against the Turks; but it has also pleased God at
other times to let us see as great victories at our own expense. In fine, ’tis a hard matter to reduce divine things to
our balance, without waste and losing a great deal of the weight. And who would take upon him to give a reason that
Arius and his Pope Leo, the principal heads of the Arian heresy, should die, at several times, of so like and strange
deaths (for being withdrawn from the disputation by a griping in the bowels, they both of them suddenly gave up the
ghost upon the stool), and would aggravate this divine vengeance by the circumstances of the place, might as well add
the death of Heliogabalus, who was also slain in a house of office. And, indeed, Irenaeus was involved in the same
fortune. God, being pleased to show us, that the good have something else to hope for and the wicked something else to
fear, than the fortunes or misfortunes of this world, manages and applies these according to His own occult will and
pleasure, and deprives us of the means foolishly to make thereof our own profit. And those people abuse themselves who
will pretend to dive into these mysteries by the strength of human reason. They never give one hit that they do not
receive two for it; of which St. Augustine makes out a great proof upon his adversaries. ’Tis a conflict that is more
decided by strength of memory than by the force of reason. We are to content ourselves with the light it pleases the
sun to communicate to us, by virtue of his rays; and who will lift up his eyes to take in a greater, let him not think
it strange, if for the reward of his presumption, he there lose his sight.